Laurie Schneider Adams - Art : A Beginners Guide

ONEWORLD BEGINNERS GUIDES combine an original, inventive, and engaging approach with expert analysis on subjects ranging from art and history to religion and politics, and everything in between. Innovative and affordable, books in the series are perfect for anyone curious about the way the world works and the big ideas of our time.

aesthetics

africa

anarchism

aquinas

art

artificial intelligence

the bahai faith

the beat generation

biodiversity

bioterror & biowarfare

the brain

british politics

the buddha

cancer

censorship

christianity

civil liberties

classical music

climate change

cloning

cold war

conservation

crimes against humanity

criminal psychology

critical thinking

daoism

democracy

descartes

dyslexia

energy

engineering

the enlightenment

epistemology

evolution

evolutionary psychology

existentialism

fair trade

feminism

forensic science

french revolution

genetics

global terrorism

hinduism

history of science

humanism

islamic philosophy

journalism

judaism

lacan

life in the universe

literary theory

machiavelli

mafia & organized crime

magic

marx

medieval philosophy

middle east

NATO

nietzsche

the northern ireland conflict

oil

opera

the palestineisraeli conflict

paul

philosophy of mind

philosophy of religion

philosophy of science

postmodernism

psychology

quantum physics

the quran

racism

renaissance art

shakespeare

the small arms trade

sufism

volcanoes

A Oneworld Paperback Original

Published by Oneworld Publications 2012
This ebook edition published 2012

Copyright Laurie Schneider Adams 2011

The moral right of Laurie Schneider Adams to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-85168-853-1
Ebook ISBN 978-1-78074-022-5

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At Oneworld Publications, I would like to thank Mike Harpley for proposing that I write a beginners guide to art, Paul Boone for his skill in obtaining the illustrations, Rachel Beaumont for her careful editing and helpful suggestions, Kirsten Summers, and Kathleen McCully. Prof. Mary Bittner Wiseman has been particularly helpful in matters of philosophy and Prof. Larissa Bonfante came up with a few excellent ideas and was always available to answer questions on antiquity. I am grateful to John Adams and Caroline Adams for reading the entire manuscript and providing many useful editorial comments.

Plates

Figures

Art is one of the most important and useful expressions of human civilization. Works of art reflect the creativity, skill, and talent of individuals and of entire cultures; art provides sources of beauty, of intellectual challenge, of change and development, and of formal, analytic perception. Like the ability to read and write, the arts distinguish the human race from the other species that populate the earth, and the categories of art, as well as the ideas that inspire them, are numerous. This book deals with the major visual arts pictures, sculptures, and buildings and more recent art forms such as installation. It also incorporates the ideas of artists, occasionally reinforcing them with direct quotations from artists themselves. Artistic themes, some that are universal and found throughout the world, and others that may be specific to a particular culture or to a particular time in history, are threaded throughout the text.

Works of art are reflections of the artists who produce works and thus can provide a window onto the character of an individual artist as well as onto the creative process. As a lens through which to view a culture, works of art are invaluable. What, for example, do the cave paintings tell us about prehistoric people? What does a colossal pyramid tell us about ancient Egypt? What do the human scale and idealized forms of most Classical Greek sculptures tell us about fifth-century BC Greece? How did Classical Greece become a foundation of Western civilization? Why does the Classical tradition persist to the present day? Why do some cultures produce portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, whereas others do not? How do works of art reinforce the power of rulers? What do they tell us about the religious beliefs and practices of certain cultures? These and other questions can be raised and often answered by studying art and its history.

In a beginners guide, it is possible to cover only a few of the ways in which viewers can approach the vast subject of art, and what they can teach us about ourselves, our history, and our culture. The creation of art, like new scientific inventions, requires analytic independent thinking and foresight, and so it is often the case that artists sense certain truths before they become clear to most people. For example, the imagery of many German artists working between 1900 and 1939 indicates that they understood the inevitability of World War I and World War II before the general public realized what would happen.

Since the greatest works of art often reflect the fact that an artist may be more attuned to his or her cultural ambience (the zeitgeist) than the viewing public, they have frequently aroused controversy. In so doing, reactions to works of art are sometimes heated, ranging from perplexity and outright rage to acts of vandalism. The proverbial my six-year-old could paint that reflects a misunderstanding of what is new and unfamiliar, especially as regards abstraction; but objections to imagery can also be aroused for political, religious, and even delusional reasons. Since imagery can exert a powerful force on viewers, whether it evokes appreciation, misunderstanding, or rage, it is important to know how to read an image as well as how to evaluate ones response to it.

The visual arts constitute a kind of language, a means of communicating within generations as well as between the past and the present. Understanding that language requires several levels of approach to a work of art. One can approach an image, a building, or an installation formally that is, in terms of its formal elements: line, shape, space, color, light, and dark and consider its aesthetic impact on the viewer. Formal elements constitute style, which consists of similarities that make up a distinct group of works. The narrative meaning contained in a work can be discerned from its context and history, as well as by grasping the message contained within it. Being able to read and interpret the imagery of a work can reveal its meaning on more than one level; it can provide us with the underlying symbolic message that the artist is trying to convey. Reinforcing the various levels of meaning in a work is the process by which a work is made and what it is made of; sometimes the very material of a work contributes to its meaning. For example, in the ancient world stone denoted power and stability because it was likely to last longer than lighter-weight materials, and as a result, stone was often the preferred material for representing royal figures and gods. But in the case of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century temporary environmental installations of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the materials are recyclable and the sites are always returned to their original condition.